That's a rather exaggerated way of putting it. And I'm not sure there's that much of a link between a government's ideology and its fiscal situation - Japan still has the biggest government debt in the world, are they socialists? What about the US rapidly caught up with and then surpassed European countries in terms of government debt as percentage of GDP, over the past few years? In Belgium, government debt had reached 130% of GDP at one point in the early eighties. By the mid-2000s, it had been cut to 98% or so, by a succession of governments of which every single one included the socialists (and the Christian Democrats, who in American eyes might as well be socialists). While in Italy, friend and foe acknowledge that the socialist leader Romano Prodi achieved remarkable results in cutting the public deficit back in the nineties, much stronger achievements than anything Berlusconi or other recent right-wing PMs did - enough so that even the Economist swallowed its distaste for the communists in Prodi's coalition and endorsed him for PM ten years later. I don't know why you're listing Sweden, either - sure, their taxes are among the world's highest, but Swedish citizens do get a lot of quality services in return, and their fiscal situation is perfectly healthy, much healthier than America's.